The following question is optional
by hnh
Summary: Our favorite elf ponders a question on his college application. Contains only minor angst.


It was senior year for Kurt Wagner, and damn, it felt good. He had finally been able to drop the ever-hated math class, his curfew had been pushed back to 12:30 on weekends, he had a car (it was a piece of junk Scott had helped him rebuild, but it ran), his midterms were over, and he was done with is college applications.  
  
Well, almost. He had written the essays, filled out his extracurricular sheets, and gotten his recommendations, but there was still one question he hadn't answered. He'd been awake all night, knowing that he had to finish them before the deadline tomorrow, and now, at 2:30 AM, he'd decided to finally confront it.  
  
If you wish to be identified with a particular race or ethnic group, please check all that apply:  
  
African American, Black  
  
Native American, Alaskan Native (tribal affiliation:__________________)  
  
Asian American (country of family's origin:__________________)  
  
Asian, including Indian subcontinent (country:____________________)  
  
Hispanic, Latino (country:___________________)  
  
Mexican American, Chicano  
  
Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander  
  
Puerto Rican  
  
White or Caucasian  
  
Other (please specify:______________________)  
  
It was an optional question, but somehow, he felt obligated to answer it. In the three years he'd attended public school, he had seen it in one form or another countless times, and had always watched as so many people around him answered it with ease. Others around him left it blank by choice, Others had left it blank, but regardless of whether or not they chose to share their answer with anyone, they had one. Everyone but him had no trouble identifying themselves as something, be it one of the options on the list, or a combination thereof.  
  
He would put blue, but that didn't exactly qualify as a race or ethnic group. Mystique and Dr. McCoy aside, he didn't know any other blue people. Besides, what would 'blue' culture be, anyway? Blue wasn't an option.  
  
He could put white. His image inducer, which is what almost everyone who met him saw, showed him as white. His mother may have been blue, but his father was most likely white, since he was German. And he had grown up essentially in a white culture, having white foster parents, attending a largely white school, and living in a mostly white suburb of New York City. But that still didn't change the fact that no matter how 'white' he felt, he wasn't.  
  
What was it about anyone, anyway, that defined their race? Was it their skin color or family background? Those factors didn't inherently make one person belong to a specific group. Each person is unique due to a complicated combination of genes, upbringing, religion or lack thereof, socioeconomic status.the list went on and on, so how important was it for him to identify himself as a specific ethnicity?  
  
And once he did choose something, what did it mean? He'd checked off a box and now he could apply to college, but what would happen when people look at his application and group him into another category? His entire life, he'd never been categorized as anything 'normal,' anything that would appear on this list. How does your race affect people's views of you? He'd had lots of people make assumptions about him when they saw him, but now they could do that without ever seeing him in person.  
  
With all of this going through his head, Kurt strengthened his resolve to answer the question. At this point, it wasn't about deciding whether he was white, or blue, or anything else. He was going to answer it because he did belong. Like everyone else, he knew he could check a box.  
  
He took up his pen and wrote one word:  
  
Human.  
  
....................................  
  
Love it? Hate it? Please tell me-you know how.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Kurt Wagner. Marvel does.  
  
Disclaimer, the sequel : I should state for the record that the official wording on the Common Application (which is where I took the question from) excludes the word race and uses only 'ethnic group' which, while I consider to be more appropriate phrasing, would kind of make the story less effective.  
  
Author's note: I realize that it is accepted (though I'm not sure if it's strict Marvel canon) to define mutants as another species, Homo superior. However I reject that notion (and if it's actual Marvel canon, I stick my fingers in my ears, shut my eyes, and sing "Henry the 8th" as loudly as possible until I can sufficiently ignore it). My argument is that in the three years of biology or environmental science that I've taken, two organisms are said to be of the same species if they can mate and produce viable (live, healthy, and capable of reproducing) offspring. Since this can be said of mutants who have children with non-mutants, they are consequently of the same species, Homo sapiens. 


End file.
